Artificially Intelligent

Cloud serfing to the end of the world

This started as a Note and got out of control. It would normally go behind the paywall for a few months but I think the topic is important enough to broadcast freely — you can support more work by becoming a paying subscriber and/or encourage others to subscribe. Also, I feel slightly out of my depth on the technology discussed here but not on the human nature wed to it, and I also trust my capacity to learn, so here goes ...

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I posted a Note here on April 30th while I was reading The Iron Heel by Jack London, which is considered one of the first truly dystopian novels, and forecasts, in 1908, the rise of a vicious corporate-government partnership in these United States. Perhaps inspired by the early-1800s Luddism movement, London describes a workers’ revolution and its goal of just socialism, which itself is idyllic, and appears viable in theory but becomes exploitative and authoritarian in practice once human nature expresses itself. It is a fine ruse to rouse the have-nots against the have-overmuches, and also a useful theme in this story of morality shaped by class self-interest, the divine right of the credentialed, wealthy (earned or inherited), and those with political connections to control and determine the fates of any lacking similar prestige, or power. It’s a good book although far from London’s best, and despite its predictable and depressing outcome — resistance crushed by the powerful state — quite thought-provoking. In it I saw some parallels between industrial-era exploitation of human capital (wages and rights reduced, and jobs eventually eliminated by automation) and our current predicament involving artificial intelligence.

It doesn’t appear that the growing resistance to AI — as futile as it is — is driven by those opposed to technology but rather by folks who are against exploitation, collusion between public and private entities, metastatic wealth redistribution, the gate-keepers standing between them and the opportunities once offered by a functioning American Dream, and overall cognitive decline among users. In one of my opinions, AI’s hijacking of copyrighted material alone should have creators aux barricades, with rifles. Regardless, artificial intelligence is here, and knowingly or not we either use or are subjected to it every single day. It is voracious, unstoppable, and constraining it towards a holistically beneficial outcome appears beyond those who claim to have their hands on the reins.

In addition to the Neo-Luddism movement, another visible aspect of the campaign against AI dominance of our social fabric involves the data centers required to increase computing power. These are sensible targets because they are physical, their impact on quality of nearby life is easy to identify, and even those not immediately affected may empathize with those who are. The resistance of the latter is deeply justifiable, especially where eminent domain seizure is used to threaten private property owners who are unwilling to sell. Total opposition is one thing, well-informed questioning is another, and prudent. I don’t find the idea that the protests and questions may be driven by foreign-produced propaganda or the advocacy of suspiciously-financed nonprofits necessarily relevant. I do find the use of confidential nondisclosure agreements to prevent public awareness and maintain the secrecy of these projects highly fucking relevant.

While it is easy for project supporters to characterize the protestors as being anti-technology and anti-progress, I think they are anti-being-told-what-to-do, anti-eminent-domain, anti-runaway-costs, and don’t see rapid accruing of profit and power to the few as a long term benefit to society on the whole. I also think the engines of these protests and the concerns raised, while valid, are imprecisely ordered in the hierarchy of reasons to resist.

Of course, the data centers use water for cooling, pollute the air with power production (although if natural gas is burned to make electricity it is cleaner than coal or oil), foul natural environments with audio and visual pollution, receive substantial tax incentives without binding them to public benefit, and potentially raise the cost of living (utility bills) when piggybacking on existing infrastructure instead of operating independently. However, cornfields and golf courses use a lot more water, we must increase energy production to support the growth of population and its appetites anyway, urbanites don’t have any stake in preserving rural or natural environments, and also don’t live where the cost of utilities (localized to areas around the data centers) affect them. It may be easier to sway those who see only the upside of AI growth by using different arguments.

My main argument against AI is that it supports the increasing breadth and depth of the surveillance state, homogenizes behavior, coalesces enormous power to centralized government, the companies and lobbyists influencing it, and places wealth great enough to turn a representative republic into a feudal state in the hands of those few operating the largest corporate conglomerates the world has ever known. Of course, cognitive decline and dependency also occurs through use of AI — making people stupider may be the point — but surveillance and social control top my list.

That significant public resistance to construction and operation of data centers is being ignored by those in power should be the basis of revolution. Clearly, in this instance, public participation in local governance is a charade. How many videos of citizens expressing concern to their representative councils — elected and otherwise — and being dismissed or bulldozed will it take before citizens understand their position as subjects? And is there anything they can about it?

Unfortunately, now that we’re dependent on the devices and habits that are literally baked into our economic and social structure (as Hasan Minhaj states in this video), our power to turn the momentum in a different direction is limited. Our appetite for convenience and ease will increase — reinforced by those who benefit from it — as will the manipulators’ detailed knowledge of our pressure and relief points. Even if we agree that the technology of behavioral manipulation is bad for the happiness and satisfaction of all who are exposed to it, our tribalism, which I’ll define as ‘social identity amplified by social media’, places us and our groups in such confrontation that we can’t unite against the larger, predatory threat. All movements away from artificial and technological dependencies have been relegated to the fringe, thus easily ignored or attacked. To make any headway against the exploitation that is 35+ years in the making will take a large movement, grown with painstaking attention and consistency. It must be decentralized to allow multiple attack vectors or present different defensive postures, with partisans ferociously adamant in their position regarding technological and authoritarian overreach.

I have no idea what this looks like but informing ourselves about the topic then thinking critically on its individual and communal impacts seems a good place to start. Then move forward to organize energy around unifying subjects like data centers and government accountability. Although it seems a fait accompli, they can only remove the teeth from our individual and collective sovereignty if we let them.

Oh, and despite this call to action sounding impossible, “try not to consume another piece of electronic media for the rest of the day.” It will be a good reminder of how deeply entrenched the use of all things digital truly is.

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Things I read to inform myself:

Blood in the Machine

Yanis Varoufakis Interview on Technofuedalism (His take on data sovereignty via digital identity is quite interesting)

How Big Tech Became Part of the State

Neo-Luddism

Foreign Support for data center opposition (pull some threads)

Eminent Domain examples here and here and here

“Wall Street’s miscalculation of what some people value most”

NDA use to hide data center details from the public here and here and here

Slow Dancing to This Bitter Earth — a little music to go with this

P.S. a glib note made while writing this: when artificial intelligence and its human teachers intervene in public association and discourse by way of surveillance (recognition technology, tracking, fingerprinting, selective disclosure, viewpoint suppression or amplification, etc.), I think its well-past time for Kyle Reese to visit this era.